“In that case, I’m off. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Russo.”
Dante held his smile until the door closed. Now, he told himself, and dropped his arm from Taylor’s shoulders.
“Whose child is this?”
No preliminaries, she thought dizzily. No safe answers, either.
“Taylor. I asked you a question. Is the child yours?”
Sam chose that moment to give a huge yawn. Tally grabbed at the diversion.
“Somebody’s sleepy,” she said, ignoring Dante and the pounding of her heart.
“Am not,” Sam said, yawning again.
Despite herself, Tally smiled. “Are, too,” she said gently. She buried her face in her daughter’s sweet-smelling neck as she carried her to the small sofa near the fireplace and sat her down. She tugged off the baby’s boots, zipped her out of her snowsuit but left on the warm sweater and tights beneath it.
“How about taking a nap, sweetie?
Right here, by the fire. Would you like that?”
“Wan’ Teddy.”
“Teddy! Of course. I’ll get him. You just put your head down and I’ll get Teddy and your yellow blankey, okay?”
“’Kay,” Sam said, eyelids already drooping.
Tally rose to her feet and forced herself to look at Dante. “Don’t,” she began to say, but caught herself in time. Don’t what? Go near my child? That wasn’t the problem. The questions that blazed in his silver eyes was the problem.
So was answering them.
By the time she returned, Samantha was fast asleep. Tally covered her, tucked the teddy bear beside her, smoothed back the baby’s hair…
“Stop playing for time.”
She swung around. Dante, standing only inches away, might have been carved from granite. Her heart was beating in her throat but the biggest mistake she could make now would be to show her panic.
“Please keep your voice down. I don’t want you to wake Sam.”
“Sam?” His mouth twisted. “The child’s name. Not your lover’s. Why did you let me think otherwise?”
She busied herself picking up the boots and snowsuit from the floor.
“I had no idea what you thought. Besides, why would I care? This is my life. I don’t owe you explan—”
She gasped as his hand closed, hard, on her wrist. “No games,” he said in a soft, dangerous voice. “I warn you, I’m not in the mood.”
“And I’m not in the mood for being bullied. Take your hand off me.”
Their eyes met and held. Slowly, he released her. Tally took a last look at her sleeping daughter, then walked briskly into the kitchen with Dante on her heels.
“I’m still waiting for an answer. Is the child yours?”
The million-dollar question. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t envisioned this scene before and all the possible ways to handle it. Dante would demand to know whose baby this was and she’d come up with a creative reply.
She’d say she was raising the child of a sister or a dear friend. Or she’d tell him that she’d adopted Sam. Any of those explanations had seemed plausible, but now, with his cold eyes boring into hers, Tally knew she’d been kidding herself.
A man with Dante’s resources would prove she was lying in the blink of an eye.